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Before I begin this story, I should say that much of it was written behind the varnished mahogany walls of Casa Cipriani in New York City. The 115-year-old club was converted from a ferry terminal into a private club located next to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, which connects to Manhattan. I am sitting on a corner sofa in front of the club’s crackling fireplace, not because the club is the subject of this story, but because I am a member and enjoy watching the private helicopters and boats come and go in the harbor. I’d love to tell you about the characters I see in the jazz cafe on Thursday nights (often at 10pm, wearing sunglasses) and hear in the sauna on Tuesday afternoons (private schools in this town are crazy) – I swear it’s like a Scorsese fever dream at times – but I can’t, because writing about the club members, wearing baseball caps and taking photographs are all taboo.
I’m not the only one who’s been drawn to membership. Since the pandemic ended, New York City has seen a surge in private clubs. It’s not a new phenomenon in major cities around the world, but it represents a new wave of choice in a city where membership has long been considered a badge of cool. Perfect for a Christmas party or cocktails with your dad’s friends? Sure. But it’s not cool. While new private clubs like Soho House have thrived in places like London (where it was founded), Berlin, Mexico City, and Bangkok, the New York club has waxed and waned in the wake of an influx of failed startup ideas and Allbirds sneakers. And now? Soho House is making a comeback, with three locations in the city. Fee-based social life is hot. There are startup clubs, food clubs, office clubs, office clubs converted into dance clubs, and old posh clubs looking for a new lease on life. What’s happened?
First, obviously, the pandemic. Office life has stopped, restaurants and bars have closed — I don’t need to explain the ins and outs of the epidemic to you. But the Long Tail effect in New York isn’t the emptying of Manhattan, as some predict, but the fact that people have genuinely forgotten how to naturally get along with friends, coworkers, and strangers. A proliferation of new clubs has sprung up. As I began to explore these clubs — venture-backed, university-funded, birthright-funded — I began to realize that many of the new, young members were joining not to develop shared values, but simply to socialize, and nothing more. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to imagine that New York City will never again have a club where people can gather for work. And here I am, in front of my new money fireplace.
Another big reason people join us seems to be that in 2024 New York City, it’s harder than ever to keep secrets. If there are dishes on the menu that only regulars know about, there are probably food writers on Substack who will tell paid subscribers about them. Good luck keeping that information from ending up on your girlfriend’s favorite influencer’s Instagram feed. If you thought going to a friend’s party wouldn’t be picked up by Find My Friends, you’d be wrong. That leaves you with two options: either spend all your meetings in a yellow cab or join the anti-photography club. In other words, a lot of people seem willing to do whatever it takes to maintain that sense of privacy.
ZZ’s features an original Warhol painting, seafood flown in daily from Tokyo, and ornate rooms said to showcase “Medici opulence.”
Membership clubs—golf, yachting, college—are nothing new to New York’s affluent middle-aged population. What’s new is that private clubs, unlike the velvet-rope bars that Carrie Bradshaw would approve of, are Friday-night hangouts for singles under 40, and maybe not even New Yorkers. As the Cadillac salesman said to Don Draper on Mad Men, “This car will show everyone that you’re grown up.” Some potential members may not be fully mature yet (bonuses haven’t arrived, stocks haven’t been cashed in), but they want to pretend they are. After all, a membership fee of several thousand dollars a year is cheaper than a Rolex or a Cadillac. As they continue to expand their memberships, will these new clubs be able to find the members they really want? And can those potential members find sex, connection, and community in the guise of face-to-face interaction? These are the questions I asked myself as I lay under a red light therapy panel in the empty Casa Cipriani gym.
This winter and spring, I visited every nightclub I could. I learned about: skinny dipping with the boss, priests who shoot guns, $200,000 entry fees, real Warhols, pseudonyms, taxidermy, and all the spicy pasta money can buy. It turns out that private nightclubs are indeed strange. But the most interesting rooms are often the ones where photography is prohibited. Behind those locked doors and velvet curtains lurks the question: Is clubbing just a passing fancy for urban life in these strange times, or is this what we’re here to stay?
To better understand the current state of New York City clubs, I want to start with the past.
The burgers at the New York Athletic Club are pretty good. The club was founded in 1868 and charges different membership fees depending on age and “lineage.” A friend who joined me didn’t put my real name on the guest list, to be sure the report wouldn’t affect his membership. After a few Negronis with a group of barely legal men in Patagonia vests, we decided to explore the building, which literally reeked of bleach and cash. We had to grope our way along the walls in the dark to find the light switch that illuminated the empty ballroom and the ceremonial portraits of past NYAC presidents. Elevator signs indicate which of the 24 floors is used for which sport—squash, judo, cards, swimming. Stacks of brochures sit outside the elevators on each floor reminding members and guests of the dress code. I imagine the noisy halls of NYAC are filled with people who love beer, hate backless dresses, and want to show off the views of Central Park to their friends.
I understand the universal appeal of owning a Tom Collins with a view and signing a bill with numbers on it, but I also understand that New York City co-eds aren’t for everyone. They’re the typical private club for analysts with trust funds who like to watch basketball and discuss moving in together in Montauk. The best of these concrete country clubs survive—even in the eyes of young New Yorkers—but the worst can take a long time to attract new members willing to spend big. What is it? A nice apartment you can’t live in? I was wary of the advertising some of the posh clubs were using, so I called the youngest person I knew who might be interested.
“The weirdest thing about tennis clubs,” a friend told me, “is that you have to wear a tie to get in, but you have to swim naked.” I suppose what’s even weirder about this all-male tennis club (which all my sources say is the hardest to get into) is that so many people have seen its owner naked. I learned more: a doubles club near Fifth Avenue Park that apparently still serves ’70s-style mayo salad and jellybean towers and, I’m told, still requires handwritten membership applications. I also learned about a group called The Links, which is exactly what its name says: a group of older guys talking about golf. They’re old school, but they’ve survived.
Core: New York: This surviving hotel from the early 21st century is aimed at those more interested in spa resorts than nightlife.
Next up was Core: New York, dubbed “a new era” by The New York Times in 2005. Though Core is of our century, it’s located next to Soho House and feels like a transitional period for New York clubbing—the Generation X of New York clubbing that preceded the current wave but survived the 2008 recession and the pandemic. Founded by CEO Jenny Enterprise, Core spans 60,000 square feet and four floors on Fifth Avenue. In addition to a 39-seat screening room and 11 luxury suites, one of the club’s most notable features is the Dangene Spa (run by Jenny’s wife, Dangene Enterprise), which takes up an entire floor. On my recent visit, smiling employees closed every door for me as I walked past.
I felt like I would buy anything Jenny Enterprise tried to sell me—she was glamorous, blonde, driven, and looked like she was born to wear a Row sweater. She’d started her first business as a teenager on Shelter Island, not a lemonade stand but a tennis camp. What started out as just $150 had grown to $10,000 by the end of the summer. Enterprise said, “I’ve come to realize that this sense of incrementalism is really important. You have to be an incrementalist to achieve an ambitious vision, right?” Exactly, I said.
Enterprise tells me that the club, which charges membership fees of between $15,000 and $100,000, prides itself on creating a global community of people passionate about “culture” and “changing the world.” The membership is a bit older, but Enterprise assures me, “We’re very interested in bringing in young leaders and energizing the community around the world.”
The New York Athletic Club and the Core Club seem to be filling their ranks this way. It’s hard to say how things are going at other established clubs. People join the Yale Club because they want to eat the BLT their ancestors ate for centuries; people join the hottest restaurant club in New York because they want to eat tuna caught yesterday in Japan. It seems to me that the demand for the former is limited. I will find that the demand for the latter is unlimited.
Over the past decade, the team at Major Food Group has opened restaurants that are so busy every night that they have trouble accommodating VIPs. No matter how carefully they check the reservation books at Carbone restaurants (New York, Miami, Las Vegas, etc.), they always end up offending someone important to them. The solution? ZZ’s Club. The top floor is home to ZZ’s, a signature Japanese restaurant, and Carbone Privato. There are precedents for similar establishments around the world, but nothing like ZZ’s Club and the recent wave of members-only restaurants that have popped up in New York City.
ZZ’s New York (there’s another in Miami), scheduled to open in late 2023, will occupy 25,000 square feet over two floors in the remote Hudson Yards neighborhood. Every detail of the club was designed by Ken Fulk, who also designed Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom’s Lake Tahoe mansion and an “anonymous billionaire’s” private jet. There’s an original Warhol painting hanging, seafood flown in daily from Tokyo, and ornate rooms upstairs that I was told had “Medici opulence” when I visited.
ZZ’S CLUB: Can’t get into Carbone or other popular Major Food Group restaurants? You can join the ZZ’S Club to guarantee your spot.
The food was delicious. I ate more Kobe beef in those two hours than I had in my entire 29th year, and every 30 minutes someone would suddenly pour me champagne, leaving me hungover as I write this. A ZZ’s Club member came to our table and told us that the club had replaced the Tavern with WS, a wine-lover’s restaurant that Time magazine’s Pete Wells called “better than it has any right to be.” But note: This member works for Goldman Sachs and lives in the West Village, and he can continue to stop at ZZ’s because he used to store his wine at the Tavern. In addition to Mr. Goldman, I also met a third-rate MTV reality star and a top-notch stand-up comedian that night.
We are the first private club to offer a Culinary Concierge service. In just 48 hours, we can recreate our clients’ favorite childhood dishes or make them their mom’s chicken soup.
Instead of spending $3,000 a year chasing your dad at a new social club, you might want to spend $30,000 (joining fee for two, plus $10,000 a year) at ZZ, where Mario Carbone recreates your real-life dad’s fantasies and the lamb chops he once grilled. “We’re the first private club to offer a ‘culinary concierge’ service,” Carbone told me. “In just 48 hours, we can recreate a client’s favorite childhood dish or make their mom’s chicken soup recipe.”
Before leaving, I asked Carbone and his business partner, Jeff Zalaznick, how they researched the project to make sure there was a market for this type of establishment. “We did what we always do,” Carbone said, “which is spend a lot of time eating and drinking alone.” Inspired, I did the same.
Tiro a Segno, the oldest traditional Italian club in the United States, opened on MacDougal Street in 1888 and allows something most New York City establishments forbid: shooting. (The club’s name literally means “shooting.”) When members tell me about the food at Tiro a Segno, they always mention garlic and red sauce (there’s apparently no menu), and when they talk about the place itself, they always mention the very informal shooting range in the basement.
I called my friend’s dad’s best friend (who was, of course, a member), and when I asked him what he thought about the guns, he said, “Believe it or not, this city needs it.” When I asked if you had to be of Italian descent to join, he said, “It would be nice to have Italian heritage, or take a DNA test or something… but anyone can join.” Other people I met who had been to the club whispered about NYPD officers, priests, and sex workers taking selfies with guns. When I called the number listed on the club’s website to ask more questions, the woman who answered put me on hold while music played. When she got through, she said, “You mean GQ magazine? Sorry, he said we can’t because we’re a private club.” I never found out who “he” was, but it seems that several of New York’s most talked about clubs were created under the influence of “him” and his club.
I have noticed that young people have a slightly different attitude towards clubs: the prices have gone up, but the quality hasn’t changed. Going to nightclubs is no longer a hobby for them. This applies to all my friends, no matter if they are 25 or 65.
Scott Sartiano, co-owner of the city’s Zero Bond club, has said he’s interested in buying Tiro a Segno someday. Sartiano, of course, didn’t realize the impact he had on my twenty-year-old self as we sat on the fourth floor of his Bond Street club recently. During my freshman year at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, 1 Oak, Up & Down, and The Darby, all of which Sartiano co-founded, were branches of my Manhattan campus. Nightlife in the early 2010s felt clean, fast, and endless. Some of the nights I laughed the hardest were in the bathroom at 1 Oak, hanging out with French skateboarders or financial moguls, hiding from the other students who only came there to hang out with rappers or smoke Molly’s while listening to Tiësto—and no one’s phone died! I don’t know where in the city you can find such a room today.
By the time I graduated from college in 2016, the icy, glittery buckets of New York City nightlife had melted. I often think back to an April 2020 episode of the Red Scare podcast, in which actress and model Hari Nef (who hosted Up & Down before American Idol and Barbie) talked about what brought the nightlife scene to a halt. “Since Instagram came along, there are no secrets in New York City anymore,” she said. “Once something good is recorded, it’s not just about influence; influence is always about economic gain… At the end of the day, all you get is something watered down and very different from the original… even though it’s more palatable.”
Core, whose membership dues range from $15,000 to $100,000, prides itself on creating a global community of people obsessed with “culture” and “changing the world,” according to CEO Jenny Enterprise.
There’s a weird storm brewing in New York City: Millennials who don’t want to grow up (usually men) and Gen Zers who are growing up too fast (usually women) crammed into a room. Is that story outdated? Yeah, I’m sure any Strokes concert would have this same demographic. But now people pay for club memberships just for the experience — the flirtation, the sex, the social opportunities, the status masquerading as power. And that’s just the nightclubs. Rezi has ruined the food scene in this city. The city’s bar parties are ruining 9 a.m. Pilates. And then there are cell phones…
I spoke to Satianno about this very different post-pandemic situation. In 2020, he shifted his focus from nightclubs to indoor clubs. Zero Bond, which has hosted celebrities like Elon Musk and Taylor Swift over the past four years, describes itself as the perfect complement to what city life was missing. “I’ve noticed that younger people have a slightly different approach [to clubbing], the prices have gone up, but the quality hasn’t changed,” Satianno told me. “You go to the same nightclub, the same sound system, the same furniture, the same drinks, but the prices have tripled.” Sophisticated people (or those who consider themselves sophisticated), he continued, aren’t interested in lining up outside a club, let alone having Grey Goose beer poured into their mouths by club promoters. “They don’t like going to clubs anymore, and that goes for all my friends, whether they’re 25 or 65. There’s a huge demand and not enough supply.”
Satianno is good at creating “entertainment” for people who would rather pay someone to direct their lives. They want sexy, cool experiences tailored to them, and they don’t have to go looking for them. Many of the best nights I spent in New York were the result of happy accidents — sitting in a restaurant, having late drinks with a waiter; handing out my phone number in a sauna on Wall Street; telling jokes to a group of women about to get up.
I noticed that these clubs, created by the ageless youth of Generation X, weren’t really aimed at people under 40 — it would be more accurate to say that they were aimed at people under 55. In other words, the club age is 34-year-olds who think they’re 25, 44-year-olds who think they’re 27, and 55-year-olds who think they’re 30.
When I asked Sartiano how many members there were in Zero Bond, he looked me straight in the eye and calmly replied, “Just the right number.”
Becoming a member gives you access to a space and people who share your interests — exclusive, personal, cultural, diverse (words that kept coming up while writing this story). “There were over 10,000 applications, and I’m not going to exaggerate that number,” he said. That’s partly because the $3,850 annual membership fee is comparable to Equinox. “I know I can charge more than anyone if I want and still be successful. My judgment is based on how hard it is to get in.”
“Listen,” he continued, “there are a few things I’m really proud of here. One of them is our art program.” He was referring to the work he’d commissioned to decorate the place. I glanced at the sneaker wall created by the conceptual art collective in front of the club’s library (which apparently only contained Assoulin Press books, available for purchase on the coffee table) and the framed prints of women in thongs in the crystal-filled Baccarat tasting room and nodded. I tried to imagine Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson sitting in this room on their second date.
“Secondly,” he said, “we have three couples who met at couples’ meetings and got married. Or two couples who got married and one who got engaged.”
The third? “If you Google ‘zero bail,’ I think in three and a half years there have been three reports of what’s been going on inside. One of them was partially true, and the other two were completely made up. I’m very proud of that because it shows how much my members care and follow the rules. Because what’s going on here is something I’ve never seen in all my years.”
“I think they all respect Zero Bond,” Satianno said. “It brings something more to their lives than just hospitality.” People like Eric Adams, who has been a Zero Bond regular since being elected mayor of New York City in 2021, can live out his life at the club without cameras, as he did before TikTok became popular in 2012, perhaps even with a newly single (and occasional Zero Bond guest) Tom Brady.
I asked Satianno what I had to do to get kicked out. He said, “Get someone to take a picture.”
It’s so tiring. I spend the whole day running around the city, doing godly work. Luckily, Casa Cipriani offers its members a nap by the fireplace. I have to keep moving forward.
Bushwick (there’s a new neighborhood being discussed!) recently opened a members’ club called 154 Scott in the SAA (Scott Avenue Associates) building. “Bushwick is one of the last truly happy neighborhoods in New York City where you can actually stumble upon anything,” Gabriella Khalil, the club’s creative director, told me. “Members’ club has become a popular name these days, but ultimately SAA is about community.”
Khalil and her husband also run the Instagram-friendly Palm Heights Grand Cayman, the nearby Erewan’s Market on Canal Street, Happy Grocery, and WSA, a new “vertical community transformation space” in the Financial District. WSA is a converted finance, insurance, and real estate office space that now houses downtown creatives. Its grandeur evokes the grandeur of Wall Street offices in the “working girl” era. When I asked the team at 154 Scott Street about membership fees, they said you had to apply to find out. The most you could find online was that they were hiring a massage therapist and a sommelier.
Where else? Oops! Silencio. Shh. The club that most resembles Sartiano’s past projects (the nightclub) is located down a narrow flight of stairs on 57th Street. If you’re thinking it must be named after the theater on Mulholland Drive, you’re right. The original Paris outpost was designed by David Lynch; the New York outpost was designed by Harry Nureyev and inspired by Lynch’s Twin Peaks. On a recent night, the crowd was like Square of Dimes, skateboarders, hip-hop, and old-time art-world types who “if you know it, you know it.” The walls are covered in thick red velvet, and for those willing to shell out for a membership, this is a more inviting option. And while it’s open to the public (despite the ugly door), a €1,200 annual fee gives exclusive priority access to Silencio locations around the world and a coworking space in Paris.
The walls are covered in thick red velvet, making Silencio a more attractive option for those willing to pay for a private membership; €1,200 a year gives you exclusive priority access to Silencio stores worldwide.
Aman New York, scheduled to open in 2022, has been in the media spotlight lately. An entire condo floor sold for $61 million this year, the hotel rooms are among the most expensive in the city (starting at $1,950 a night), and the hotel has a members’ club with a $200,000 initiation fee. Aman New York’s members were the most timid group of people I interviewed—they weren’t even willing to risk losing their memberships. So I turned to another reliable source: a friend who’d been there a few times. I asked him to help me explain the situation at the time.
“When I went in with friends,” he wrote to me, “everyone knew his name. I hadn’t taken him there before, so it wasn’t that empty. Take the elevator up one floor and it’s breezy. There’s an outdoor smoking area, and they offer cigars and snacks. The olives are really spicy, and they also have wasabi, peas, and nuts. They change them all the time. There are definitely more men than women. The men range from bankers to Long Islanders—unfortunately, I say that in a derogatory way.” At which point I confessed that I was from Long Island. “The food was okay, but nothing special. There was a jazz club that was really good, and there were only five people in the room. So it was like a one-man show.” It’s sad to think about a trumpet player playing at full blast in front of five people, but what if these places actually supported New York’s jazz musicians? This is one of the sponsorship proposals that I can support.
The success of the Los Angeles version of San Vicente Bungalows explains why there are rumors of 10,000 people waiting for this club that no one has ever seen before.
Around the corner from Soho House in the Meatpacking District is a yet-to-open club called Chez Margaux. The Chez Margaux website details membership fees ($1,800 a year for under 31, $2,600 a year for over 31) and offers visitors watercolor illustrations and text depicting Margaux (the club) as someone who “owns you before you realize you’re being sold.” Chez Margaux’s main attraction is a restaurant designed by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The building’s owner, Michael Keir, also owns Soho House and Casa Cipriani. As far as I’m concerned, the average Manhattanite sees an empty building, while Keir sees one full of money.